Dakota Beacon

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

We live in challenging, even turbulent, times. Sorting out fact from fiction, truth from lies, adds to the challenge. Take health care for example. The fix is far from in. Here are some phony claims muddying the water.

Claim. Obamacare covered everyone. Not so fast. This claim is not true. The Hill reports that of 326 million Americans only sixteen and a half million people are covered. That is 5% of the current US population that is insured under Obamacare. Twice that number lost their existing insurance plans when Obamacare was legislated.

Claim. By getting rid of Obamacare 22 million Americans would be left uninsured. Hold on! The Kaiser Family Foundation puts the number of uninsured currently under Obamacare at 28.5 million Americans. In fact, Forbes puts the residual number of uninsured in a GOP proposed plan at no more than 5 million, many of them by choice.

Claim. Since the implementation of Obamacare 130,000 jobs were created. So said Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors. Not true. In fact, Obamacare killed 10,000 small businesses (i.e. businesses with 20-99 employees) because these businesses could not provide health care for their employees. This info was furnished by Mercatus Center and American Action Forum. Stated another way, Obamacare destroyed 250,000-300,000 small business jobs.

Claim. About repealing Obamacare, Bernie Sanders stated on July 9, 2017, “28,000 Americans every single year could die! That is nine times more than…on 9/11, every single year!” The Centers for Disease Control would beg to differ. Their data indicates the mortality rate for ages 15-64 since the implementation of Obamacare has surged over 20,000 deaths per year.

Claim. Until the December 2017 budget deal, Obamacare was bending the cost curve downward. Nancy Pelosi stated, “Health care costs have risen at the slowest rate in fifty years.” Humph! According to Federal Reserve Economic Data, Business Insider, and Forbes Obamacare bent the cost curve upward by 36%. The cost for a family plan provided by an employer has climbed over 49%.

After Trump’s election when it became apparent that Obamacare was at risk, Democrats appealed to their liberal base with lies about the glory of a single payer (government paid) health care system.

Claim. A single payer health care plan such as that advocated by Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for all” proposal could save trillions of dollars by removing the middleman – the insurance companies. Even the liberal Urban Institute sees the matter differently. They argue that Bernie’s plan would drive spending up by $32 trillion over the next ten years. No savings to be found.

Claim. Adopting a single payer plan improves health care. That is the claim but experience argues otherwise. The Fraser Institute and the Commonwealth Fund see the matter differently. Canada experiences the longest wait times for health care in the developed world. Plus, their health care technology is severely rationed. For example, they have 8.8 MRI machines per million people while the US has 35.5.

Claim. A single payer plan saves lives. Not really. Canada, Scotland, and the UK all experience significantly longer treatment wait times resulting in much higher hospital death rates than does the United States. This has been known for years as reported by the Fraser Institute, Forbes, The UK Daily Mail, and other sources.

Claim. Many states embrace a single payer plan. Come, now. This just is not so. Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Minnesota, and New York (all blue states) have tried and failed to enact legislation for a single payer plan. The price tag is too exorbitant. The California initiative was crushed under a projected $400 billion bill. Even Bernie Sanders’ Vermont rejected a $4.3 billion price tag given that Vermont’s total state budget without a single payer plan is $4.9 billion. The budget would have doubled.

The final claim. A single payer plan is what most Americans want. This lie tops them all. Pew Research reports that at best only 33 percent of Americans favor a single payer plan. This group is mainly comprised of low information snowflakes and liberals.

All these claims have been planted by the mainstream media and fertilized by social media. They grow like weeds among Millennials and Democrats.